i4Policy

The Innovation for Policy Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that supports public policy co-creation at scale. The Foundation has pioneered new methodologies and tools for deliberative and participatory policymaking processes and has a unique experience bringing policy users into national and regional policy reform processes. The methodologies and tools developed by the Foundation have been used in more than a dozen countries to support participatory policy reforms, the team has trained government and ecosystem leaders in more than 20 countries, and has supported a movement (#i4Policy) of more than 170 innovation hubs across 45 African countries to co-create a grassroots policy vision of government actions to enable innovation and digital transformation. Open source software tools developed by the Foundation have been deployed by the Governments of Mali, Nigeria and Senegal to host nation-wide policy consultations, and the team is modeling regional policy co-creation through the facilitation of the Africa Innovation Policy Manifesto which has reached more than 1mn people and engaged more than 10,000 entrepreneurs across 45 countries. These processes have resulted in concrete policy reforms. The Senegal Startup Act, which passed in December 2019, for example, was developed through more than 50 co-creation meetings between the Government, policy experts, local startup community leaders and more than 1,000 citizens over 19 months. The regional policy Manifesto has also influenced the AU’s 2020-2030 Digital Transformation Strategy.